School report cards counterproductive: oeCD

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced his much-vaunted education revolution this week, but an international report has warned against the kind of public reporting of school performance levels that he is proposing.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (oeCD) says comparing the performances of schools, their principals and teachers does not work as a way of producing better academic results.

The report, called Improving School Leadership, has been two years in the making and looks at the quality of education in 19 of the 30 countries in the oeCD.

Finland, which scores highest on the international league tables, has no official school assessments but instead owes its success to a strong investment and respect for its teaching profession.

In Australia researchers visited Victoria and praised the State Government there for focusing on providing autonomy for teachers and principals.

But Beatriz Pont, who is one of the authors of the report, says there is no evidence that external performance reviews work to improve results.

She says they can actually be counterproductive.

"The best way to achieve academic results is to invest in teachers and in school leadership," she said.

The oeCD report says Australia has some way to go to catch up to countries like Finland, which consistently tops international academic performance tables.

Finland does not test its pupils or its teaching staff. Instead they pride themselves on having the highest quality teachers in the world.

"They [Finland] only accept into teacher training one out of 10 candidates who want to study to become a teacher. It is a very reputable career," Ms Pont said.

Finnish Ministry of Education counsellor Aki Tornberg says school funding is tied not to performance but to the number of pupils, and the Government promotes self-assessment in schools.

"Absolutely every teacher must have at least Master level graduate," he said.

"They have to have a university-based study, and it takes five years."

The oeCD report says that the challenge for governments struggling to raise school performance is to make school teaching an attractive profession by ensuring appropriate wages and career prospects.